The Banishment of Roger Williams from Massachusetts Bay (1635)
On October 9, 1635, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony formally ordered the banishment of minister Roger Williams for spreading views deemed dangerous to church and state. Williams's insistence on the separation of religious and civil authority, along with his sympathy for Native American land rights, put him at odds with Puritan leaders. His exile would ultimately lead to the founding of Providence and the colony that became Rhode Island, a haven for religious liberty in colonial America.
A Puritan Dissenter Arrives in the New World
Roger Williams was born around 1603 in London, England, and trained as a minister within the Puritan tradition before emigrating to Massachusetts Bay in February 1631. He quickly gained a reputation as a gifted preacher, serving congregations in Boston, Salem, and Plymouth. However, Williams held theological and political views far more radical than those of his fellow colonists. He argued that civil magistrates had no authority to punish religious dissent or enforce church attendance, a position that struck at the foundation of the Puritan colony's tightly integrated church-state structure. Williams also challenged the validity of the colony's land charters, arguing that King Charles I had no right to grant land already occupied by Native Americans without fair purchase or compensation. These positions, voiced repeatedly in sermons and disputes with colonial magistrates, alarmed leaders like John Winthrop, who saw Williams's ideas as a direct threat to the social and religious order they had worked to establish. By 1635, tensions between Williams and the colonial government had reached a breaking point, setting the stage for a formal confrontation before the General Court.
Did You Know?
Roger Williams became so skilled in Native American languages that in 1643 he published "A Key into the Language of America," one of the first English-language guides to the Narragansett language, which also doubled as a work of anthropology and social commentary on colonial-Native relations.
The Trial and Banishment
In the summer and fall of 1635, the Massachusetts General Court summoned Roger Williams to answer for his teachings, which officials characterized as "newe and dangerous opinions." Williams refused to recant his beliefs, maintaining that true religious conviction could not be coerced by civil power and that forcing individuals to worship against their conscience was itself a sin. On October 9, 1635, the Court formally sentenced him to banishment, giving him six weeks to leave the colony's jurisdiction. Illness delayed his departure through the harsh New England winter, but by January 1636, Williams fled south into the wilderness rather than risk further punishment or forced return to England. He later wrote that he wandered for fourteen weeks in the winter cold, sustained in part by local Narragansett and Wampanoag people, with whom he had cultivated respectful relationships and learned their languages. This period of exile proved formative, deepening his conviction that colonial land claims required honest negotiation with indigenous peoples rather than royal decree alone.
Founding Providence and a Legacy of Liberty
In June 1636, Roger Williams purchased land from the Narragansett sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi and founded the settlement of Providence, naming it in gratitude for what he saw as divine guidance during his exile. Providence became a refuge for other religious dissenters, including Anne Hutchinson's followers, and Williams established it on principles of religious liberty and separation of church and state unprecedented in the American colonies. In 1644, he secured a charter from the English Parliament uniting Providence with other nearby settlements into the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Williams went on to write influential works, including "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution" in 1644, which argued forcefully against religious coercion. He also maintained complex but generally fair relationships with Native American nations, mediating disputes and advocating for their treatment even as colonial expansion continued. Rhode Island's charter of 1663 enshrined liberty of conscience into law, making it one of the first governments in the world to formally guarantee religious freedom. Williams died in Providence around 1683, but his ideas on church-state separation would echo through American political thought, influencing later founders like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson as they shaped the First Amendment.